1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an authentication method, apparatus, and system for authenticating users who use terminals, which are equipped at respective places so as to offer various services and, more particularly, to an authentication method, apparatus, and system, which can implement efficient, highly accurate personal authentication by combining a plurality of authentication schemes.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there is growing interest in security, and various personal authentication schemes such as password input upon starting up a personal computer, personal identification number input upon using an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) terminal in a bank, fingerprint or retinal pattern verification in room entrance management, and the like have been developed.
Upon building a system that offers various services by setting terminals at respective places, the system developer selects and introduces an authentication scheme for authenticating users who use the terminals in consideration of merits and demerits, cost, and the like of various authentication schemes.
In an authentication scheme that exploits a biological feature such as a fingerprint, a retinal pattern, or the like, a specific person tends to repeatedly cause authentication errors. That is, a person, who has a feature that readily causes authentication errors in a portion of an object to be authenticated by that authentication system, can seldom access such a system which adopts that authentication scheme. Normally, since the authentication scheme is permanently installed in the system, it is difficult to take a measure, e.g., to replace that authentication scheme by another one. Therefore, in consideration of such users, the system preferably has a mechanism that allows the user to select a desired one of a plurality of authentication schemes.
However, it is not always preferable to allow the user to select a desired authentication scheme in terms of security against access by illicit users. For example, the system may always allow an illicit user who has knowledge to attack a weak point of an authentication scheme with low authentication accuracy to select such an authentication scheme.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above situation, and has as its embodiment to provide an authentication method, apparatus, and system, which can implement efficient, highly accurate personal authentication by combining a plurality of authentication schemes.